general zooplankton question's

CLINTOS

CLINTOS

New member
just some question's I have about zooplankton

not 100% on what I want to culture I know amphipod
lookinf for different size

What are my option's to feed coral live food and maybe mandarin and pipefish looking to maybe keep a 50G above display

trying to figure out what might stay alive in a 200G system
I'll be dosing phyto

pod size?

what eat's what pod etc

rotifer's what coral eat's rot's do pipefish or mandarin's eat rot's?
can rot's survive in population inside a aquarium?
 
harpacticoids

calanoids

which are best for culture and maybe keeping alive in the average reef aquarium?

which is good just to have as a regular dose?

herpacticoid copepods

which one is good to culture in which the size is between rotifer's and amphiopod?
 
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Rotifiers are about 150 microns and are gernerally cultured at lower SG than reef tanks. The higher the salinity the slower they reproduce. Rotifers are not native to saltwater. herpacticoid copepods will be a larger pod that maybe too large for mandarins and deffinatley too large for pipe fish. Mysid shrimp are good, but they are canibals and will eat their young and other pods. Copepods and amphipods should be able to sustain a population in a 200 gallon reef tank with just what you get from live rock. I would maybe add 2 packages of copepods. Amphipods enough will deffinately come with your rock. Also pepermint shrimp in a sump will reproduce relatively quickly and are a good choice for natural foods. Good luck your looking at a lot of work. I would try frozen foods first. Prawn eggs, mysid shrimp, and cyclopeez works very well for mandarins and pipe fish. If you only add a few of each into a 200 gallon system I would say you should have enough stuff in your rock for them to feed off of. Especially if the tank is well established with a good amount of liverock.
 
Rots are probably too small to be a direct feed for the animals you are talking about. And there's no way you are going to culture them in your display system. Plus, unless you are enriching the rots they are a particularly bad food source. The only reason they are used for larval fish is that the size is right for many and they are easy to culture en masse.

Calanoids are a fantastic food but also need very specific culture conditions. They spend all their lives in the plankton and don't particularly appreciate bumping into hard things. Especially things like pumps or filtration units.

Harps are fine foods for animals like mandarins and are easy to culture in a refugium to boot.

Amphipods are easy to culture in a refugium. IMO, they would appreciate meaty foods larger than phytoplankton. A little crushed fish food works.

Mysis are good to culture in refugiums, too. They need to have lots of hiding places like rock rubble because the adults will consume the smaller ones. Meaty foods for these guys, too.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15061429#post15061429 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by "Umm, fish?"
Yes to both questions.
Click to expand...

what's their diet consist of?

anything in the calanoids family that will survive in population in the aquarium along with being fairly simple to culture?
 
anything that will survive the aquarium's condition's that might compliment Tigriopus californicus,amplipod when it come to size

any good substitute for rotifer's?
 
Thought I would put this out there I get different opinon's everywhere just wanted a 3rd plus person's opinion

do zooplankton produce more waste then they consume?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15057352#post15057352 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mscarpena
Rotifiers are about 150 microns and are gernerally cultured at lower SG than reef tanks. The higher the salinity the slower they reproduce. Rotifers are not native to saltwater. herpacticoid copepods will be a larger pod that maybe too large for mandarins and deffinatley too large for pipe fish. Mysid shrimp are good, but they are canibals and will eat their young and other pods. Copepods and amphipods should be able to sustain a population in a 200 gallon reef tank with just what you get from live rock. I would maybe add 2 packages of copepods. Amphipods enough will deffinately come with your rock. Also pepermint shrimp in a sump will reproduce relatively quickly and are a good choice for natural foods. Good luck your looking at a lot of work. I would try frozen foods first. Prawn eggs, mysid shrimp, and cyclopeez works very well for mandarins and pipe fish. If you only add a few of each into a 200 gallon system I would say you should have enough stuff in your rock for them to feed off of. Especially if the tank is well established with a good amount of liverock.
Click to expand...

shrimp's in the sump can they're egg's get lifted ok into a 800gph lift pump to display or am I better having the shrimp egg's go down a overflow into my display was thinking of 6 to8 cleaner's
in a 20-25G

should the overflow have hole's in lower and middle overflow box
in 20-25G

for the egg's to overflow if they don't float to the top?
 
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<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15058117#post15058117 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by "Umm, fish?"
Rots are probably too small to be a direct feed for the animals you are talking about. And there's no way you are going to culture them in your display system. Plus, unless you are enriching the rots they are a particularly bad food source. The only reason they are used for larval fish is that the size is right for many and they are easy to culture en masse.

Calanoids are a fantastic food but also need very specific culture conditions. They spend all their lives in the plankton and don't particularly appreciate bumping into hard things. Especially things like pumps or filtration units.

Harps are fine foods for animals like mandarins and are easy to culture in a refugium to boot.

Amphipods are easy to culture in a refugium. IMO, they would appreciate meaty foods larger than phytoplankton. A little crushed fish food works.

Mysis are good to culture in refugiums, too. They need to have lots of hiding places like rock rubble because the adults will consume the smaller ones. Meaty foods for these guys, too.
Click to expand...

rotifer's I heard might be a source newly hatched mandarin's specifically s/s.s something like that are these a smaller form of rotifer?

anything else that I might be able to look into for smaller fry then perc's
 
I'm not sure I really understand your questions. Have we moved from feeding adult fish to feeding larvae? Yes, larvae need small, nutritious, easy to culture foods that arouse the hunting instinct in the fry. Pretty much all of the fry foods have trade-offs among those four things. Rots are easy to culture (for most people, mine like to crash), but pretty much suck nutritionally and, depending on the larvae, might be too big. Some copepods are the right size for small larvae (copepodites for small-mouths) and are probably what the larvae eat in the wild, but are difficult to culture in large numbers. None of it matters if the food is too big to go into the larva's mouth or if the food doesn't arouse any interest from the larva.
 
ultimately I want a wide range of available live food size on my reef
mostly for mandarin's,seahorse/pipefish but also for coral's,zooplankton etc

Gladioferens imparipes calonoid what will eat this?
 
That's cool thanks I'll check it out

lol I would send you some

Heard they are a type of Calanoid that can be cultured and can survive reef condition's was studied for 25 year great first food
for seahorse and a alternative to mysid in the diet of seahorse's

That's cool thanks I check it out

Are microscopic pod's that are hard to see/not seen with the eye are these beneficial to a reef tank in large amount's?

is there a name for these pod's?

or are these just bigger pod's seen with the naked eye later as they grow and microscopic pod's don't exist?would
 
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You were saying mysid are good for growing in the refuge with alot of rock rubble because the adult's eat the young this is good to know because I was unsure if mysid's were in my 20G before I thought they were something else maybe they were

do mysid's normaly stay close to the gravel surface but in the water and swimm very fast in and out of rock work?

Hoping I had mysid before without knowing 100% I did dose alot of phyto this what they might eat?

If this is the case then I think I can duplicate my 20G but on a 225G level

If I culture them is the fact they eat there young is this what make's it hard to culture or is it water volume?
 
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